


love too will ruin us

by absopositivelutely



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, M/M, Qrow Branwen Needs a Hug, actually i can believe it, lol can't believe that was an actual tag, qrow deserves better, unrequited qrow/summer if you squint?, v7 chapter 12? never heard of her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23386705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/absopositivelutely/pseuds/absopositivelutely
Summary: Love comes in the shape of a weapon, sometimes. It is in the way it takes him apart, slicing cleanly between his ribs, manipulating them with a painful precision until it reaches his heart.//(or; qrow branwen, misfortune, and love)
Relationships: Qrow Branwen & Raven Branwen, Qrow Branwen & Raven Branwen & Summer Rose & Taiyang Xiao Long, Qrow Branwen & Ruby Rose, Qrow Branwen & Summer Rose, Qrow Branwen & Taiyang Xiao Long, Qrow Branwen & Yang Xiao Long, Qrow Branwen/Clover Ebi
Comments: 22
Kudos: 108





	love too will ruin us

**Author's Note:**

> i'm ignoring chapter 12 because qrow deserves better. here is a fun character study! it isn't chronological but i numbered every section so you could get a sense for the timeline if you really wanted to. and yes there are 13 sections because the opportunity seemed so obvious. 
> 
> title is from [scheherazade](http://youngerpoets.yupnet.org/2008/04/22/scheherazade-crush-by-richard-siken/) by richard siken. his poetry makes me... feel things. it is quite sad. but 10/10 highly recommend.
> 
> hope you enjoy! :)

* * *

look at the light through the windowpane. that means it’s noon, that means we’re inconsolable. tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. 

— _scheherazade,_ richard siken

* * *

**x.**

It has been a long day. It is always a long day. He does not remember the last time it was not a long day. 

_What do you live for?_ he asks himself, needle stuck in an endless groove in the record, _why are you here?_ His fingers are curled around cool metal, too light without its familiar liquid weight. He breathes in, once, twice, back pressed against the door, cold and hard like the rest of Atlas. Time to run through his checklist. The kids are fine, have been fine for a while, no thanks to him. His weapon, another rare constant in his life, resting lightly against the wall. He is safe, now. 

His eyes slide shut. Breathe in, once, twice. 

**ii.**

Love comes in the shape of a weapon, sometimes. It is in the way it takes him apart, slicing cleanly between his ribs, manipulating them with a painful precision until it reaches his heart. Summer’s eyes are bright silver in the afternoon light, and he remembers reading somewhere that moonlight is born from the sun. Qrow shakes his head, stretching his legs out on the grass. “It’s complicated,” he tells her, finally. 

“It’s just family,” she says, “it’s who you love.”

His breath feels like it is caught in his chest. Across the field, he can see Raven and Tai making their way to where they are sitting. “I wouldn’t consider the Branwen tribe as family, then,” he says, so quietly he isn’t even sure his partner hears, but Summer takes his hand and studies his face intently, her eyes cataloguing the outline of uncertainty, and he does not know what she sees.

“Our team is family too, you know,” she says, and he does not believe in religion but it is a benediction he did not know he was waiting for. “I don’t know what they did but I do know you’re better than that, Qrow.”

“She still thinks we owe something to them,” he says, nodding at his sister. They are two sides of the same coin. Heads or tails doesn’t matter. One will always have to follow. 

“You _don’t._ Not to them, or to her.”

He lets himself imagine it, if only for a second. Harbinger still in hand years from now, Summer a blur of rose petals ahead of him, Tai at his side throwing punches, Raven’s sword slicing through the air behind him, knowing that this is what he will have for the rest of his life. Summer’s grip around his hand tightens for a second before she lets go, fingertips brushing over calluses that fit neatly against the curves of his scythe. The Branwen tribe is known for liars and thieves and murderers, and he knows he is a weapon that is caught in their grip. 

“Maybe you’re right,” he tells Summer, and raises a hand to wave at the rest of his team. They fit into the spaces between his ribs, nudging gently against his heart. 

**v.**

“Don’t fight it,” he says, “fight _with_ it.” 

“What’s the difference?” Ruby asks, shaking her hair out of her face. For a moment she is Summer, tying her hair back as she gets up from her last sparring match with him. He blinks and Ruby is there again, picking her scythe back up and shifting into a fighting stance. She looks older every time he visits, he thinks, wiry muscled arms trembling as she lifts Crescent Rose up to rest it on her shoulder. 

“I know it’s heavy. Use that,” he tells her. Harbinger spins in his hand, the weight of the blade carrying it forward. Ruby raises Crescent Rose and lets it fall forward. Its blade buries itself into the earth and Ruby turns to him with wide eyes, bright silver in the sunlight. 

“Uncle Qrow! Did you see that?” she gasps, and he doesn’t know whether she sounds more like Tai or Summer. He reaches out to ruffle her hair. On the porch, Yang sticks her head out around the door. 

“I saw it!” she yells, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Super cool, Ruby!”

He can’t not see them in his nieces; the way they tease each other like him and Tai, the way they carry Raven’s fierce loyalty, the way they love like Summer did. This, he thinks, is one of the things his Semblance can’t take away from him. Ruby whirls around him in a blur of red and he is twenty-eight again and too far away from the flurry of petals that zips furiously around a mass of darkness. The battlefield is silent when he arrives. The worst thing he has done in his life is return to Patch with empty hands and no words of comfort. 

“Did you see, Uncle Qrow?” Ruby demands again, and he slings an arm around her shoulder. She is her mother’s daughter but he swears he will not let her follow in her footsteps. 

“Yeah, kiddo,” he says. “I did.”

**viii.**

This is a dance he has memorized the steps of since he was born: one to the right, ducking under her arm, swinging his sword towards her side, one foot behind him as he throws his weight forward, Harbinger clashing against the only other blade he knows as well as his own. He remembers when they were younger, playing with branches while the tribe broke camp; later, building their weapons side by side, his scythe hooking around the neck of a Grimm while her sword cuts cleanly through its heart. The Branwen tribe taught them both to fight but Raven is the one who taught him the outline of a strike, the silhouette of a parry. Three decades of memory runs deeper than a loss of love, and he still knows her next moves by heart. 

“We’re not family anymore,” Qrow bites out, Harbinger and Omen locked against each other in a standoff. Raven tilts her head to the side, not breaking eye contact with her brother. 

“Were we ever?” she asks, so calmly he knows she must believe it. He learned to fight from the Branwens but he learned to love from his team, and it occurs to him now that Raven might not have done the same. 

“I thought so,” he says, meeting her gaze evenly. He does not know what he is looking for; regret, perhaps, a shade of doubt. There was a time when he knew her better than he knew himself, knew the way her jaw would tense when she was angry, how her eyes narrowed when she was searching for an opening to strike, the tilt of her head that signaled an attack she needed his help with. He sees it in his nieces, how Ruby is at her sister’s back when she notices how Yang focuses on her target, how Yang is there to distract the Grimm when Ruby goes rocketing behind it, waiting for it to let down its guard. There is nothing of the Raven he knew that is standing in front of him. “But I guess I was wrong,” he says, and hopes that she cannot read him well enough anymore—eyes darting to the ground, tension bleeding from between his shoulder blades—to see the shape of defeat.

**xi.**

There is an unsettling stillness in the snow. It works its way into his muscles, cutting sharp into his bones. He feels more than hears movement behind him, the air shifting with the other man’s presence. 

“Hey,” Clover says. 

“I can keep watch,” Qrow says, without turning around. “Go on in.”

“Qrow,” he says, and Qrow thinks he likes the way his name sounds in Clover’s voice, thinks there might be a note of something like longing. There is a pause and he wonders what Clover thinks, if Clover thinks of him at all. “It’s cold,” he seems to settle on, finally. 

“I noticed,” Qrow says wryly, and goes. 

The small village is silent, snow crunching under their boots as they make their way through the houses, searching for any survivors. He catches the sideways glances Clover throws at him every few seconds and tries not to think about it too much. 

“You know, this would be more efficient if we split up,” Qrow says, when he knows Clover is looking at him. Clover raises an eyebrow and holds a door open for Qrow.

“It would,” he agrees easily, and follows Qrow inside.

There are no survivors and no sign of Grimm. Qrow knows it is not his fault but blaming himself for every bad thing that happens becomes habit after a few years. He remembers Tai’s message while he is out on a mission, _Raven’s gone, please come home;_ the night Summer left, Ruby in Tai’s arms and Yang in his as they stand on the porch, a familiar sweet scent lacing the air and the ground littered with rose petals; the crushing hopelessness of looking Ruby in the eye after speaking to Jinn and seeing an uncertainty, a distant sense of being lost that he knows all too well.

“Qrow,” Clover says, and he turns, then. “Are you okay?”

He thinks: _you are the one good thing I can’t ruin._

He says: “Just fine, lucky charm.”

**iii.**

The pull of the air against his wings is a familiar force by now; Qrow knows how to catch the wind just right to let a current carry him to the ground. It is too quiet without a team, his team, by his side. Tai is in Vale, working on getting a position at Signal; Summer is on her own mission, alone. They don’t like it but Ozpin must know what they’re dealing with. He shifts back and drops into a roll, coming up in a crouch, one hand resting lightly on his weapon. 

“Raven,” he mutters into his scroll. “See anything?”

A burst of static, then: _“No. Meet back up, then?”_

“Yeah,” he says, “see you.” He slips his scroll back into his pocket and steps off the edge of the cliff he’s standing on, stretching his arms out as he shifts into a crow again. He makes his way towards the building he’d agreed on with Raven previously, landing near the door. Raven is already there, picking the lock with a practiced ease.

“Do you ever wonder what the point of all this is?” she asks, not turning to look at him as he approaches. 

“To unlock the door, probably,” he says, knowing what she is really asking but afraid to have that conversation. She rolls her eyes and twists the doorknob more viciously than she needs to.

“You’re stupid, but not that stupid,” she says, not holding the door open for him as she starts going down the stairs. “We weren’t supposed to go this far, Qrow. We know what the tribe wants us to know. Why are we still here?”

He pauses on the steps, watching Raven ahead of him. It has always been like this, he thinks; following in his sister’s footsteps into uncharted waters. “To find Salem’s forces and to protect the Maidens,” he says. It isn’t the answer she is looking for. He doesn’t know what she is looking for, lately.

“Haven’t found much of either, have we,” Raven says, shining her Scroll’s light around the empty warehouse. “And what about the tribe? Are we protecting them, too?”

“Raven,” Qrow says. The familiar syllables are caught in his chest. He doesn’t know what he wanted to say next. 

“We need to go back home,” she says. _Home_ can mean so many things, he thinks; the collection of tents where he grew up with Raven is what she is talking about, but his first thought is the house in Patch that Tai lives in, with rooms he’d promised to each member of their team. He looks up at his sister and knows she is thinking of the same thing. “Qrow. We can’t.”

“Not forever,” he says. “But you love them too.” 

“That’s _why,_ Qrow,” she hisses, taking a step forward. “Don’t you see that what we’re doing is useless? We all just keep getting hurt. And for what?”

“Oz trusts us,” he says. Even to him, it sounds small; it sounds like a question that he desperately needs _yes_ to be the answer to. 

“He trusts us to do what _he_ wants. But _he’s_ not the one risking his life out here for something we don’t even know if we can defeat.”

“Raven,” Qrow says, tiredly, turning away, “There’s not much good I can do wherever I go.”

“Oh,” she says, softly. She doesn’t offer him anything else, and he wonders how long it will be until he has nothing left of her. 

**vii.**

Ruby and Yang aren’t his kids but he thinks the way he loves them isn’t too far from how a parent might. At the very least, he knows he cares more than Raven does. He thinks of Summer after Raven left; even before she fell in love with Tai she had loved Yang with a ferocity that he had seen only a handful of times before. 

He’d promised her before every mission that he’d take care of her daughters. He would hold up the world, if Summer Rose asked him to. 

Qrow flicks a wing as he settles into his perch on a tree, just out of sight of the campfire crackling beneath him. He can make out Ruby’s face through the branches, the firelight outlining the soft angles of her face; he still sees the child he’d held in his arms at the funeral. When she stands up to hand something to Nora he sees the sharp planes of muscle running down her arm, cloak sweeping around her the way Summer’s would. She looks every bit the Huntress she has always dreamed of being.

It was Pyrrha’s Semblance that attracted metal but he thinks there is something magnetic about Ruby, too. She moves easily among people; by the fire, she trades a grin with Nora and wins a handful of words from Ren, and as she passes Jaune she taps his back gently, earning a small smile in return. She leads like Summer, throwing her own life forward, but he thinks this is something Ruby learned from Tai, making sure that there is a place for everyone on her team. 

Qrow understands, then, why they follow her without question. After all, he is following her too.

**iv.**

Down the hall, through the walls, he hears the quiet, wrenching sound of Taiyang Xiao Long falling apart. 

“I could go after her,” Summer murmurs, more to herself than to Qrow. She paces the length of the room, bottom lip caught between her teeth. Qrow adjusts his hold on the baby in his arms and looks at her helplessly. “I could catch up with her, Qrow.”

“Summer,” he says softly. He doesn’t know how to put to words what he wants to tell her but he must communicate it somehow, between the crack in his voice, in the shadows under his eyes. 

“I know,” she says. He thinks there might be tears in her eyes. Summer looks between him and the door, hesitation clear in the line of tension drawn between her shoulders. “Is it okay if I…”

She trails off, motioning in the direction of Tai’s room. “Yeah,” Qrow says roughly, “you should go.”

She pauses for a second and doubt lances sharply through his chest. “I don’t want to leave you,” Summer says. 

“I’m not going to run too,” Qrow snaps, holding Yang closer. “Summer you can’t really think—”

“That’s not why,” she says quickly, stepping closer. Her hand is warm around his shoulder and he swallows back a sob. “She’s your sister, Qrow. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Oh,” he says. It punches the air out of him. “Summer.” His hand finds hers and grips it tightly. The words are caught in his throat but he knows she understands. 

“I’ll be back,” she says, fingers brushing against the curls on Yang’s forehead. Qrow nods and turns away as she slips out of the room, looking at Yang instead. 

“Hi,” he says, hesitantly. Yang blinks up at him, eyes pale lavender and too knowing. He doesn’t understand how Raven could ever leave her. She yawns and looks around and he wonders how much of this she will remember, how much of this will hurt her. 

He thinks he would give his life up for her. Then, he thinks that might have been what Raven did. Leaving a cause she never believed in, keeping her enemies away from her daughter. He hopes that was her reason, hopes it had nothing to do with their team, or a stroke of misfortune. 

“I’m your Uncle Qrow,” he tells her. He knows he leaves bad luck in his footsteps but he promises himself that he’ll be here for Yang. He’d fight off any semblance of a threat if it was for her. 

**ix.**

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Ruby says quietly. She is a shadow framed in the doorway and Qrow sighs, running a hand down his face before sitting up and shifting over for her. 

“Come in, kiddo,” he says. She settles cross-legged on the end of his bed, blinking up at him the way she did when she was younger and would beg him for stories about team STRQ. He starts to say something before he’s interrupted by a knock at the open door, followed by Yang peering in. She grins hopefully and scratches the back of her neck, a familiar gesture that he recognizes, with a jolt, as being his own. A sharp blade of guilt lances through his chest. He forgets, sometimes, that they look up to him. He doesn’t think they should but he can’t exactly stop it.

“Hey, firecracker,” he murmurs. 

“Hi, Uncle Qrow.” She settles in next to Ruby, tucking her sister under her arm, and nudges her in the side. “Tell Rubes she shouldn’t feel bad,” Yang says, and it’s part teasing, part defiant; it reminds him so much of Raven, though he isn’t going to tell her that. 

“You shouldn’t feel bad,” Qrow parrots flatly, cracking a wry grin when Yang rolls her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he adds, more sincerely. “About, you know.” He gestures vaguely at the flask on the nightstand, catching the way Ruby eyes it distrustfully, the way Yang’s arm curls tighter around her sister’s shoulders. 

“Can you just promise you’ll try?” Ruby asks, voice small and unbearably honest; she sounds like the girl he’d taught to fight, but with years of wisdom weighing on her shoulders. Qrow wonders when his nieces had grown up so quickly.

“I will,” he says, and hopes they know how much he means it.

**xii.**

He is tired. 

Breathe in, lift his weapon, breathe out. His scythe is a part of him and it weighs heavy in his hands. 

He does not want to fight. 

“Clover,” he says, quietly, dangerously. His low voice carries across the open expanse of land stretching out between them. “Don’t.”

“I _have_ to,” Clover says. It cuts sharply into Qrow’s chest, slipping between his ribs. He has never understood why Clover’s weapon is a fishing rod but he thinks he gets it now: Clover’s aim is pointed, severe; he knows he will not miss. The way he looks at Qrow is calculated, careful, and he knows that Clover’s words were meant to land the way they did. 

“You don’t want to,” Qrow says. Tyrian is a shadow behind Clover and Qrow watches him; he steps sideways, closer to where Tyrian is, keeping his eyes focused on Clover. “You don’t have to do what he tells you.”

“I trust James,” Clover snaps. “I wanted to trust you.” Kingfisher is gripped tightly in his hands, knuckles white, shoulders trembling. Tyrian’s tail is held high and Qrow can feel the rough bite of it tearing into his side, phantom-sharp. 

“Then _trust me,”_ Qrow says, before bursting into action. 

He remembers his first days in Beacon, when he had fought wildly, desperately; blades whirling in every direction, fighting to survive, the only way he’d known how to. Then Tai had stepped in, shown him how to direct his energy, channel it purposefully. Qrow moves deliberately now, snow pressing hard under his feet as he closes the distance between himself and Clover. He shifts into a flurry of wings as Clover swings his weapon; Kingfisher’s line grazes across the surface of his tail and he pinwheels before regaining his balance. The wind catches under his wings and he soars, circling in the air before dropping into a dive. 

The first time he’d tried to shift midair he’d collapsed on top of Raven, who’d pinned him into a headlock even while she was laughing. It comes easier now; he knows to crouch low to find his center of gravity, knows to compensate for his momentum by landing with a roll. He rises smoothly to his feet behind Tyrian, scythe drawn in one fluid motion, and pins him to the ground.

“Tie him back up,” Qrow says, eyes meeting Clover’s, wide and caught off guard. 

Tyrian starts to laugh. Qrow spins his weapon and knocks him out.

“Take him back to Atlas,” Qrow says. He puts Harbinger down and steps away. “Take me, too. If it’s what you have to do.”

Clover secures Tyrian wordlessly, cuffing him and hooking Kingfisher around his arms for good measure. He looks back up at Qrow, then, wrists held in front of him. “Qrow,” Clover murmurs, pained, “you’re just giving up.”

“No,” Qrow says. It is the most certain he has ever been. “I’m trusting your choice. Whatever it is.”

“Oh,” Clover whispers. He looks at his scroll, then at Qrow, then puts his finger to his earpiece. Qrow closes his eyes and looks away. He hears a footstep, then nothing. When he opens his eyes he sees Clover’s earpiece, lying in pieces in the snow. 

The sun is rising behind Clover, light catching on the sharp planes of his face; pale lavender outlining his jaw, faded rose painted across his cheekbones. Clover smiles at him and Qrow thinks, suddenly, that he wants to kiss him. Instead, he swallows roughly and says, softly, “Knew you had it in you, lucky charm.” 

He does not know what will happen after this moment in time but he wants to live in it as long as he can.

**v.**

Something shifts. 

Qrow moves quietly down the hallway, closing Yang’s door, then Ruby’s. Tai is sitting in front of the fireplace, a vacant look in his eyes that Qrow is too familiar with. He doesn’t look up when Qrow sits down next to him, instead holding out a hand to motion at Qrow’s flask.

“No way,” Qrow scoffs. “Only one of us gets to have a problem.”

“Since when is that fair?” Tai asks, elbowing him in the ribs, and Qrow bumps his shoulder against Tai’s, and he closes his eyes for a moment and it’s like they are in Beacon again and sitting in front of the fire after a long mission, arms and legs sprawled across each other. He blinks his eyes open and half his team is gone, and Tai looks like he’s heading there, too. 

“You’re their dad, I get to be the cool, questionably inclined uncle,” Qrow points out, and Tai barks out a laugh. There is a silence that stretches out between them, one that Qrow doesn’t know how to break.

“She won’t answer my calls,” Tai says, finally. Qrow notices the scroll gripped in his hand, Summer’s face smiling back at him on the screen. He remembers the way the world had felt like it stopped, just for a second, a few minutes ago. “She’s probably at the edge of where the signal towers reach. It’s fine.”

“No it’s not,” Qrow says abruptly, standing up. “I’m going to go after her.”

Tai turns to him, and Qrow thinks that he has never seen defeat before this moment. “Okay.”.

“Don’t tell the girls where I went,” Qrow says, slinging his weapon across his back. “Not until I bring her back.”

He comes back empty-handed. The sun is shining brightly when he opens the door to see Tai, Yang, and Ruby waiting on the other side. It is a cloudless summer day, and he thinks it is a testament to injustice, or maybe just his luck, that the world keeps turning when Summer Rose is gone. 

There is no body to bury but they have a funeral anyway. Ruby is curled up in his arms as they gather at the gravestone; she is too young to understand but Yang is not, and he thinks that Yang might be who Tai needs right now, someone who is caught in as much grief as he is, someone who does not remind him of _her._ It isn’t Ruby’s fault but Qrow swears she will never have to know that it was ever an issue in the first place. He looks down at her; silver eyes, a lopsided smile, a reflection of her mother. 

Qrow thinks that, at the very least, Summer will not be forgotten. He sees the same determination in Ruby’s eyes and knows that she will carry her mother’s name into war. 

**i.**

“I’m looking for my sister,” Qrow snaps at the girl, eyeing the spear she’s spinning at her side. It seems like she’s doing it mindlessly and the worst part is that he thinks she really might not be thinking about it. He holds back from spinning his own scythe. He’ll only embarrass himself.

“Well it’s not my fault you found me first,” she answers, pushing her hood back with her free hand and tucking her hair behind her ear so he can see her face. The first thing he notices is that her eyes are gunmetal-silver, glinting dangerously in the light. The second thing he notices is the way her jaw is set, the way she pulls back her shoulders; she carries herself with the confidence of someone who knows that they are a threat. He thinks that of all the ways this partnering business could have gone wrong, this might not have been the worst option. “I’m Summer Rose.”

“Qrow Branwen,” he says, waiting for her reaction to his tribe’s name. There isn’t any and he isn’t sure whether to be offended or grateful. “Let’s go get our relic.”

He’s never fought _with_ someone, not really. He’d fought Grimm with Raven but it was never as a team, not in the sense that Summer asks him to now. Fighting with Raven was like two parallel lines; they could take out a group of Boarbatusks together but Qrow was left to his own devices with every individual Grimm he faced. Now, facing a King Taijitu, Summer tells him to attack, tells him that she’ll cover his back. He swings his scythe at its head and misses. His side is left open for attack but a bullet from Summer sends the Grimm reeling back. Qrow glances back at her and shoots her a small smile before rushing back in, Harbinger clicking into place in its sword form. This time he doesn’t miss. 

When they become a team the first thing Summer tells them is that they need to learn to work together. Qrow learns the way each of them moves; he knows when Tai settles into a wide stance, he is about to unleash a flurry of powerful punches; knows that when Raven closes her eyes for a beat longer than a blink, one of her portals is about to shimmer into existence; knows the quiet breath that Summer lets out before she squeezes the trigger.

The second thing Summer tells them is that the best team is a family, and he thinks he understands what that means now. He knows his Semblance is misfortune but he wonders at how that can be true when he has his team. 

They are at the top of one of Beacon’s many towers, the sun setting to the west. He doesn’t know how Summer had figured out how to get up here but he finds he doesn’t care very much. Raven leans over the ledge, hair blowing in the wind, and he watches his sister laugh at something Tai says. Summer is beaming at both of them, gesturing wildly as she speaks. It’s Tai’s Aura that glows gold but in these moments they all do; it has nothing to do with the way their faces are outlined by soft fiery sunlight and has everything to do with the way he feels like he is home. 

**xiii.**

Quiet is peaceful but there is also a certain danger that comes with it. If he thinks too much about it he starts to remember an empty field, the ground torn with battle scars. Other times, he’ll recall how suffocating silence can be when it stretches out across the snow.

Breathe in, once, twice. He closes his eyes. 

“Hey, lucky charm,” he murmurs, without looking.

Clover’s laugh is a low rumble in his chest. Qrow hears him shut the door before he moves to stand next to him, leaning against the porch railing. An arm circles around Qrow’s waist and he leans against Clover’s shoulder, breathing easier now. “What are you thinking, little bird?”

“It’s quiet,” Qrow says simply. He keeps his gaze focused on the stars above them, the last rays of sunlight fading from the horizon. Clover snorts softly and noses against Qrow’s hair.

“It’s not going to be quiet tomorrow,” Clover says, and Qrow thinks of the kids; not just his nieces but the family they’ve found for themselves. It reminds him of his own team, in their best years. He thinks the kids have done even better, after the war. He also thinks that, at best, the kids can talk at a volume just shy of deafening when they’re all together.

He still can’t wait to see them.

“You’re right,” Qrow says, “but you know that’s not what I was talking about.”

“It wasn’t,” Clover agrees easily. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Clover is gentle with him. It’s something Qrow didn’t expect, not when they first met. He had been proud and confident in all the ways that Qrow was not, in all the ways that Qrow still isn’t. Somehow it also means that Clover isn’t afraid of Qrow’s defensiveness. He knows how Qrow can get. “Not really,” Qrow admits, and Clover nods, dropping a kiss on top of Qrow’s head.

“Want to come in and help me clean the guest rooms? You know at least some of the kids aren’t going to want to leave.”

Qrow nods. “Go ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“I love you,” Clover says lightly; this is still something new between them, though it feels like something that should be written into his bones. Qrow says it back and catches the wink Clover throws at him just before the door closes. He smiles when he turns back to the stars. The crickets are beginning to sing. He remembers, long ago, someone telling him that the crickets’ songs were a sign of good luck. 

It’s a nice story but he doesn’t really believe it. He knows now that he can find his own good luck, despite his Semblance. He’s not entirely sure how he did it but he thinks it has something to do with love.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments always appreciated :) 
> 
> find me on [tumblr](https://qwowo.tumblr.com/)!


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